Intelligence failure ─ and success

On Christmas Day, there was a frightening near-miss effort to bomb a passenger jetliner bound from Europe to Detroit. This was followed by the murder of seven CIA employees in Afghanistan by a suicide bomber masquerading as a loyal agent.

Review of the Christmas Day incident has highlighted the vexing ongoing dilemma of getting intelligence agencies to coordinate across bureaucratic lines. Efforts to do so since 9/11 have been generally frustrated. The current Information Integration Program succeeds earlier unsuccessful efforts.

The U.S. tends to emphasize organization, but intelligence remains essentially a very human vocation. Winston Churchill evolved over the years into a genius at collecting all sorts of information, and also people. One of the most pivotal of the latter proved to be Frederick Lindemann, the brilliant son of Jewish emigre parents, who held a chair in physics and philosophy at Oxford.

Despite Professor Lindemann's impressive professional success, he remained a somewhat isolated figure. No doubt anti-Semitism was one factor in 1930's Britain. Lindemann's primary problem, however, was that he was a relentless overbearing know-it-all. Churchill's granddaughter, Celia Sandys, politely described him as “anti-social.”

Even Churchill's endlessly patient, tolerant wife, Clementine, resisted having the Oxford don as a weekend houseguest, but her husband insisted.

When Churchill returned to government as head of the Admiralty at the start of the Second World War in Europe, he immediately recruited Lindemann. The scholar, who was particularly talented at statistical analysis, had one mission: to undermine the conventional wisdom and established naval plans of the government.

Churchill became Prime Minister with the fall of France, and Lindemann's role expanded, but his basic mission remained unchanged. He was to pick apart whatever was proposed by the admirals and generals, the civil servants and politicians, and the members of government — including the Prime Minister. Churchill assumed Professor Lindemann would enjoy his role but also expected him to excel, as indeed proved to be the case.

WWII could easily have turned out differently. Imagination, resulting in the ability to do the unexpected, was a crucial ingredient of Allied success. Evaluation of information was another. Lindemann drove these dimensions.

What are the lessons for today? First, given the seriousness of the global terrorist threat, the White House must be very directly engaged and the President must take the lead, though not usually in public. In this regard, the startling statements by Attorney General, Eric Holder, that Obama was not involved in the decision to try alleged 9/11 plotters in civil court in New York City should be a matter of grave concern. Lack of general media attention to this is disturbing.

Second, there must be emphasis on the human dimensions of intelligence. The Clinton administration in particular emphasized technology over human assets. This trend diminished after 9/11, but is still present. When a father who is also a respected accomplished leader visits an American embassy in Africa to warn that his son is dangerous, the incident should not simply be entered in the bureaucratic information flow.

Churchill's instincts and approach provide a brilliant instructive example. By the way, after that war Lindemann was elevated to the House of Lords by a grateful nation.

Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College and author of “After the Cold War” (Macmillan and NYU Press). He can be reached at acyr@carthage.edu.

Subscribe to The China Post and save 25%. Click here

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email